


Grin and Bear It

by Rotpeach



Series: Every Nuance of Misfortune [10]
Category: Boyfriend to Death (Visual Novels)
Genre: Boyfriend to Death 2: Fresh Blood, Gen, Gore, Horror, Necrophilia, POV First Person, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 09:03:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16615985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rotpeach/pseuds/Rotpeach
Summary: Come to think of it, Strade hasn't been by in a while, has he?





	Grin and Bear It

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a while for me too lol  
> i'm officially coming off of hiatus and will be posting again (albeit irregularly). i thought this would be a nice warmup as i get back in the swing of things.  
> the only things i post on ao3 are long works and series, so if you want to see what i do in between, you can find me on tumblr as rotworld.

It occurs to me, as I’m dumping the scavenged remains of our DIY Halloween decoration section into a shallow bargain bin grave, that I haven’t seen Strade in a while. 

And that’s a little weird. Not that he hasn’t been around, because we’ve taken to avoiding each other out of the most begrudging kind of respect there is. I see him maybe once a month in sporadic, unpredictable visits that go something like this;

Strade will saunter in with his customary five o’clock shadow, pit stains and shit-eating grin. Jane still thinks it was a bad breakup and she’ll give me this sorry look while he hey buddy’s his way through the store. 

There he is, my idiot coworkers will sigh, the patron saint of home improvement. There’s that swell guy who makes the neighborhood better just by living in it, that pillar of the community who cleans gutters and mows lawns and fixes worn-out deck panels with a smile. There’s the man who saved a stray kitten from inside somebody’s car engine last week, the unassuming, down to earth, do-no-harm handyman come to brighten our day with his endless positivity and charisma, the perfect neighbor from a white picket fence American wet dream and suburban Jesus incarnate.  _ Give me a fucking break. _

And he’ll take his time. He’ll meander all slow and casual, reading the signs on every aisle like he doesn’t have them memorized, letting people bend over backwards to help him find the same shit he buys every time he comes here. They think he’s absent-minded and that it’s endearing, because the alternative, the possibility that he’s just fucking with everyone he meets, that he conceals the excited tremor in his hands at the thought of taking a shiny, brand new power saw to somebody’s fingers and watching them twist off like little sap-spurting twigs from a diseased tree by gripping the cart and pretending to be lost, just doesn’t occur to them. 

Maybe we’ll be busy that day. Maybe every line is filled with a procession of impatient homemakers and fidgety hobbyists and marriages on the brink of destruction over the color of living room wall paint. That’s fine. He’ll wait. And when it’s his turn, when he inevitably comes through my checkout lane with his smile wide and his cart overflowing, he’ll say, “Hey, buddy,” and I will die a little bit on the inside wishing we could stop having this conversation. The motions are automatic for both of us, almost mechanical, our eyes locked the second they meet and never straying no matter what our hands do. 

I will know, by touch, that what I pick up is the 150-pack of zip ties, and as I run the price scanner over the back, I will imagine a pair of bound wrists, choked circulation and cloudy bruises. Inelegant and ugly. I’m not sure when I got to be so opinionated about this kind of thing but our tastes just seem to get more and more different every day. I know him and I know his disgusting style and I know his type is wasted potential. Looking at him always makes bile churn in my stomach in an angry, hateful way. 

“You’ve always got a project going on, huh?” I might say. I’ll sound friendly and conversational with just the slightest feigned twinge of heartache coloring my words. I’ve gotten good at making people think they know what’s going on in my head. I learned from the best.

He will laugh a kind, good-natured and not at all serial murdering snuff-filming psycho laugh. It’ll be flawless, very convincing. The woman who works the next lane over from Jane will swoon. I’ve caught her staring a few times and I let her without saying anything because she’s got a nice figure and a cute face and I know it’ll translate into something stunning after she’s had her turn on camera. 

“You know me,” he’ll say, and I’ll be irritated that he always feels he has to one-up me like this. That he has to go the extra mile to shrug and run his hand through that greasy pile of shit he calls hair and look all sheepish like we’re having a moment right here in the store, like the look in our eyes and the blush dusting our cheeks is a longing for happier days and not a mutual desire to start tearing each other apart like animals right here. 

(I’d start at his throat, of course, just like he taught me, I wouldn’t squeeze because choking’s too tame, too quiet for him, and I’m usually quiet but he makes me loud and that’s up there on the list of things I hate about him, it’s up there right alongside tying me up in his basement, making me ruin my favorite corpse, and continuing to exist. I’d start at his throat and I’d use nothing but my teeth, I’d bite down like he’s nothing but sweat-soured, disgusting meat until there’s nothing left but a fluttering, shredded mess of gristle and the hiss of air he tries to breathe dies in the blood pooling in his open, mangled throat and i can taste his trachea—)

“You think he shops somewhere else now?” Jane asks. She leans over her checkout counter and taps her fingers on the register nervously.

“What? No,” I say. That’s not it. That can’t be it. That’s too mundane, too plain for him. 

We talk outside of work still, a few stilted words at the handoff when one man’s trash becomes another’s treasure. But he hasn’t been sharing lately, either. Hasn’t called, hasn’t messaged, hasn’t invited me over for a “cookout” or to “help move some furniture around.” I’ve gotten desperate and started digging around in the old coyote-tread burial ground but there’s only old bones there, not enough flesh to hold onto. 

I noticed but I didn’t and just quietly held it against him. Holding out on me, I thought. Being selfish. But that’s not what this is. He walked out of the store one hot summer afternoon and the ground opened up and swallowed him whole. 

“That wouldn’t be so bad, right?” Jane says.  “He was getting on my nerves, too.” He wasn’t, but it’s nice of her to pretend. “It’s still weird, though. Just all of the sudden he stops showing up?” 

I hum in agreement and take a look around the store. I take care to look forlorn and searching, but I’m just making sure he’s not here somewhere, hiding in the lumber shelves. He didn’t get caught, did he? That can’t be it. I would’ve heard about it. It would’ve been on the news, the biggest story this town has had in years. There’d be police tape and rotating lights, faded photos of the house in the paper with outrageously sensational headlines that sound like airplane novel titles like “ _ Serial Murder in the Suburbs _ .” They’d come here because they’d come to every store like this in the city limits just to see if anyone knows anything. 

My fingerprints are all over that fucking house. I’m sweating. I’m telling myself that can’t be it and I’m drumming my fingers against my thigh and trying not to vomit.

“It is weird,” I agree. Not because he isn’t here, but because she’s noticed and I’ve noticed and we’ve all started to notice, and it’s set the store off-balance. Like we’ve all been holding our breath since the last time he came in and now the burning in our lungs is unbearable. Our watches are off and we don’t know which way is up. Strade’s been coming here as long as most of us have been employed here and his absence is like a hole punched through reality, a person-shaped emptiness in the power tool aisle, a void at the woodworking counter. It’s a crime against the natural order and it means something’s wrong. 

Jane sees the look on my face and mistakes it for any number of things she wants and expects to see—regret, loneliness, the pain of rejection. She asks, “Hey, so, what’re you doing this Saturday? You know that new  _ Ouija Haunting _ movie came out and it looks super bad—”

(So if he didn’t get caught, then what  _ happened? _ Where is he right now? What has he been doing for the last few months if he doesn’t need to stock up again? Did he quit? Did he move? Is he laying low for a while? Did he leave without telling me, did he metaphorically trip me and throw me in the path of the oncoming, metaphorical law enforcement bus? 

Should I move, too? Should I change my name and shred my credit cards and buy a one-way ticket out of the country before anybody catches on?)

Jane’s calling for me, snapping her fingers in front of my face. She looks upset, angry on my behalf. “Hey. Fuck him,” she says. “I know, I know, easier said than done or whatever, but seriously. Fuck him. Don’t give him space in your head.” Jane is a good friend, way too good for me.

“I know,” I say wearily. “I know. Thanks. I’ll try not to.” But I can’t think of anything fucking else right now and it’s driving me crazy that he’s gone but still here somehow, gone and still inhabiting every inch of this store, clogging up the pipes, lurking behind every corner. Doesn’t even have the courtesy to disappear properly, has to be a nuisance even after he’s gone. If he’s dead, maybe he’d haunt the store. Knock boxes over or make the power tools start running threateningly when they aren’t plugged in. 

The automatic doors slide open and let in a freezing gust of late autumn air. Jane calls out a friendly welcome and I mutter something that sounds vaguely cheerful, on auto-pilot, working myself into a frenzy in search of a greasy piece of shit ghost that might be peering out from the paint aisle with a stupid smile on his stupid fucking face. I don’t find anything like that but now I’m looking over my shoulder constantly. Everyone in a green jacket looks suspicious. Everyone with disheveled hair gets a warning side-eye. Some scrawny orange-haired guy in a hoodie strolls through my aisle the wrong way and grabs a cart, and—

Wait. 

Wait wait _wait_ his hair is orange, like bright fucking orange, and where have I seen that before? I know I’ve seen that before. Short, scrawny, orange hair, fucking where have I seen that?

The rest of him is throwing me off, unfamiliar features that don’t fit whatever buried memory I’m trying to match him against. I’m staring openly at a total stranger who’s got his fingerless gloves clamped on a red cart handle dressed in big, baggy gray from head to toe like he doesn’t want people looking at him and here I am looking because he’s familiar somehow. Why is he familiar? It’s on the tip of my tongue. His eyes are a warm honey color and now I’m thinking about somebody else whose eyes looked like that only in the harmless, warm lights of the store. 

This is stupid, I’m thinking. This is insane. But I know him, I’m sure of it.

Then he slips into an aisle and vanishes around a pyramid of assorted gardening tool all-in-one box sets, and he ceases to exist for a while. Jane is talking about some TV show I’ve never heard of and life goes on in the store even without Strade, customers moving in lines like ants through subterranean home and garden tunnels. I think I have to move on. I think I have to tell myself he’s gone and he isn’t coming back and I have to stop looking for him in every pair of cargo pants and amber eyes that come in here or I’m going to lose my mind. 

A man, battleworn with a young child in the cart and another slobbering over the candy shelf behind him, sets a basket down on the conveyor. I make myself say, “Hello! Did you find everything alright?” and when he makes some noncommittal noise and ignores me in favor of making a phone call, I continue to smile beatifically. I scan a cutesy lime-green watering pail, a stone planter as big as his head, a pair of sharp, scissor-like garden shears 

(and I think of clipping his ear. Just tearing the shears out of the package, fitting the bird beak of metal around his detached lobe and crunching through flesh and cartilage, watching blood splatter on the stone floor and across my register counter. Messy, just like Strade. I hate how much he’s rubbed off on me but sometimes I don’t want to push people quickly and efficiently into the open, beautifying arms of death because I’m hungry for something fresher. 

I want to plunge my fingers into the pulpy hole and watch him writhe on the floor. I want to climb over this register counter and crawl on top of him and stab him until we’re both slick and warm, until he stops moving, until he doesn’t fight when I rip through his clothes and grind against him to completion while he bleeds out on the floor).

“Would you like to save up to fifteen percent today by joining our membership program?” I ask. 

“No thanks,” he says and slides his card through the reader. 

(I’d keep him a while. I’d preserve him as long as I could but I’d enjoy it when he gets soft and rotten, too. I’d bury him for an hour and dig him back up and then I’d make love to him right there out in the woods with a tangle of worms warm against my center when I rut against the sloughing skin of his limp, dead dick oozing a cloudy slurry of rancid fluids and maggots. I’d push his cold, flopping hands against my body and kiss his unmoving lips and nothing in the world would matter but the two of us. We could be totally, wholly in love until he starts to break down and really smell and there’s more insects than flesh.)

“Can I get a receipt?” he says impatiently. It’s the second time he’s asked, I can tell by his tone, his narrowed eyes, the hard grip on his stray child’s forearm. I dutifully print it and slip it into his bag, and I watch love in its larval stage walk out the door with a wistful expression. I’m not like some overzealous poacher who hunts where he makes camp so everyone can put two and two together and know where he’s been. That’s the only reason Jane is still alive.

And speaking of Jane, she’s got her arms crossed and a brow raised when I turn around. She thinks my type is big, burly men who smell like oil and sweat, strong arms and broad backs and a distinct gentleness to their worn hands, and she’s so fucking wrong that it’s hard not to laugh sometimes. “I saw that,” she says. 

“Saw what?” I say innocently. 

“Give yourself a little time before you jump back in, alright? Jeez!” But she winks and I know I’m off the hook when she turns to help the next customer in her lane. 

There’s another one in mine unloading half the store onto my counter, so I smile and I pick up a tightly-wound disc of electrical tape and I say, “Hello! Did you find—” 

(Wait I got it I know this I know how I know this it’s right there on the tip of my tongue goddammit)

Orange hair kid is back and I still know him from somewhere. His warm, honey eyes are filled with an overwhelming, euphoric kind of happiness, like he’s sleepwalking in the best dream of his life. His smile is wide. He keeps putting more shit on the counter and making tall, leaning piles, boxes on top of boxes, tubes and cords and wires draped over plastic odds and ends. “Yeah, thanks,” he says, and I realize he’s on auto-pilot, too. Not all there right now but somewhere else in his head. 

I fucking  _ know  _ him and it’s driving me crazy.

“You know, I’ve never been in here before,” he says to me. I’m trying to scan faster to keep up. Pliers. Battery packs. A power sander. “I really like it. You guys have everything!”

“Oh,” I say. I force a laugh. I ignore what feels like a weight hanging in the pit of my stomach, a dread-filled heaviness the likes of which I haven’t felt in a very, very long time. “First time customer, huh?” 

“Yeah, I just.” Full stop, mouth hanging open, voice dying somewhere in his throat with a little strangled bird hitting a window pane noise. “Uh. Moved in. Recently.”

(Liar. Fucking liar. Where, I want to ask, where the fuck did you move into or from you asshole think you’re so fucking sneaky,

Why is this making me so mad)

“Nice. Welcome to town,” I say. I think his cart is finally empty but there’s a sea of rigid, jagged things to get through coming down the conveyor. There’s a nail gun. There’s a  _ nail gun _ . I look from him to the plastic case and back again, smile still plastered to my face. “Ah. Contact trigger,” I say. The words falling out of my mouth are old things coming back from the dead, slipping out from the familiarity, a nostalgic feeling of unease. “Careful with these things. It’s easy to double-fire by mistake.”

“Double-fire?” he asks. 

That single sentence, that amateurish question should be all it takes to put my mind at ease. It’s not Strade, Strade is dead, Strade is not living on in the form of some pint-sized ginger come to make my life miserable. This guy has no fucking clue what he’s buying, so why is he smiling like I just told him he won the lottery?

“You know, firing another nail without meaning to?” I say. “Causes a lot of accidents. It’s an easy way to get hurt.”

“Oh, I’ll be careful,” he assures me. He sounds excited. He pushes his cart the rest of the way through and he’s already grabbing the things I have bagged. He caresses the nail gun through the packaging and I’m starting to feel sick. No way. No fucking way. “You know a lot about this kind of stuff?” 

“I work here, I have to know a little bit,” I say. There we go, laugh it off, keep scanning. Just get through the moment. Fertilizer. Tomato seeds. Thick gardening gloves. Just one thing at a time and this will be over and I’ll probably never see him again. 5 gallon bucket. Deodorizing spray. Industrial-strength chemical cleaner. Don’t look at him, don’t look at him, don’t look at him. There’s a length of chain just long enough to have a dog leashed in the front yard so it can’t go further than the sidewalk. Alright. Okay. 

There’s a pocket knife. I look at him. I can’t help it. His smile dampens with embarrassment and he rubs the back of his head. 

“Does it look really bad?” he asks, laughing. “It probably does. I’m just buying a whole bunch of random stuff. But I kind of came here with nothing but the clothes on my back.”

Of course. This is a plausible explanation. He’s getting better at lying the longer he talks to me. I scan the item and put it in a bag with the assortment of box cutters and wicked-looking garden implements. Do I look stupid, I’m wondering, do I look like I was born yesterday. I’m afraid that I don’t. I’m afraid he’s looking at me and seeing whatever it was that Strade saw, but that would be ridiculous. 

( _ Right? _ )

“Hey, since I’m new and all,” he’s saying, talking with a total disregard of my mounting discomfort just like somebody else I know (or knew), “could you tell me what kinds of things are fun to do around here? Like, where do you spend your weekends?” 

“I don’t get out much,” I say. A lie, a clumsy one, and he sees it, he tilts his head with a taken aback expression god fucking dammit. “I mean, I just started recently. I’m kind of. You know. Not great with people. Work in progress. Still practicing.” 

“Oh, no, I understand,” he says soothingly. He can look very soft and considerate when he wants to. Am I imagining the excitement and the hunger in his eyes because they’re a color I know? “I’m still practicing, too. Where do you go to practice?” 

I’m all off-balance and stumbling through this conversation with a churning stomach and a pounding heartbeat, smile trembling, waning, one sweaty hand clutching the price scanner and the other slipping around a metal plate with a little ring where the chain could attach, trying not to think about it. “Uh. The, uh, the Braying Mule. Sometimes. Now and then. I guess.” 

(It’s not for a dog, there’s no fucking way it’s for a dog. I know that look. I know him.  _ How do I know him? _ )

“The Braying Mule, huh?” this stranger who does not feel like a stranger repeats, testing the name on his tongue with a scrunched up expression like it tastes bad. “Do you like it there?” 

“No,” I admit. “No, it’s just a habit. I’m familiar with it. I end up back there a lot.” Weird. Feels like I’m getting something off of my chest. 

He nods like he gets it, like he sympathizes. “Maybe we could go together sometime,” he offers, and Jesus Christ when he turns the charm on it’s a little disarming. He’s really cute. He narrows his eyes just so and smiles all warm and inviting just like—

Just fucking like—

“A-are you,” I stammer, hate it, hate myself for stammering, “are you trying to, uh. Y’know. Is this like a friend thing, or a—?”

“It can be, but it doesn’t have to be,” he says smoothly. The slightest hint of a blush dusts his cheeks, like he’s decided to be embarrassed about this. Maybe he really is. I can’t put my finger on when exactly this conversation shifted from me glaring across the counter to feeling like it’s the only barrier keeping me safe, and I don’t know  _ why _ . His eyes are making me wish I could hide. Nobody is looking but as far as I’m concerned, Strade is right fucking here.

And then I get to the end of his endless purchases and realize there’s one thing left that he dragged behind him, a thick cardboard corner with a bar code peeking through my aisle, and my heart stops. It’s a table. It’s a round, bargain-priced, some-assembly-required coffee table, and it’s definitely too big to fit in the cart, or for him to carry out by himself. I’m hyperventilating. A glassy-eyed corpse is flashing before my eyes. I reach over to scan the barcode and he isn’t really leering at me, I don’t (want to) think, he shouldn’t be, but the face in my periphery seems to be grinning when I’m not looking directly at it. 

“Would. Would you. Um.” (I’m in fight-or-flight mode, vision spotty and prickling, mind overridden with blinding panic, my tongue thick and clumsy with words I would rather drink bleach to stifle than say aloud) I take a deep breath and on the exhale I just smash it all together because they won’t come out otherwise, a rushed, “wouldyoulikehelpgettingthatouttoyourcar?” 

He smiles. In a memory, he smiles. The scars trailing up from his chin curls. I can’t figure out who I’m looking at and the world is starting to blur around me. “That’d be great, thanks,” he says. I’m going to be sick. Jane isn’t even looking, isn’t even processing this, because it doesn’t look important to her. She sees something that looks even more harmless than the already perfect Strade, smaller and more clueless, doesn’t even know why a contact trigger is dangerous but is pretty fucking excited about it anyway. Someone takes over my lane as I heave the table up and out the door after him.

It’s the same car. It’s the same color, the same model, the same license plate. I think I’m having a psychotic break because I don’t know how else to explain this. I stand there watching him dig through his pockets in search of the keys, holding my breath, wanting to run and wanting to confront this and wanting to know for sure and for certain what the fuck is actually happening. He opens the trunk and there’s

_ nothing _ .

Empty space. A back row of seats folded down. I blink and I rub my eyes but it’s true, it’s empty, it’s a void where it feels like there should be something just like the store. I let out a long, relieved sigh. I laugh under my breath at myself. I use both hands to lift the table and slide it in, cramming it in all the way up between the front seats. 

“What were you expecting, huh,  _ buddy _ ?” 

I don’t want to turn around. I don’t want to look at him. I want to get back into the safety of the store where I can hide behind the counter and the sheltering gazes of my oblivious coworkers. I don’t want to answer him because I remember now. I know where I’ve seen him before. 

Ren steps closer and his next words come from right beside me in a low, excited hiss. “Don’t worry, I know. Of course I know. I didn’t forget you.”

“Where is he?” I ask. It just slips out, automatic. My face heats up with shame.

He regards me with curiosity. They look exactly the same. His eyes are colder and harder now, honey to fossilized amber, flecked with all the dark things that always squirmed beneath Strade’s surface. I don’t remember that. I don’t remember them from the timid thing I saw in the basement one night, the collared animal with a hundred scars who couldn’t look me in the eye, who told me to just roll over and take it if I wanted to survive. “Do you really care?” he asks. “Or are you just asking for closure?” 

My mouth opens and closes uselessly. I don’t have an answer. His gaze softens and I feel like he can see right through me.

“Yeah. I get that,” he says. He reaches for my arm and I should move, I try to move, but I just stand there paralyzed like I’m stuck in quicksand and his fingers wrap around me. His nails are sharp, even through my sleeve. “I mean it,” he insists. “I get it better than anyone. We’ve got a lot in common, don’t we? We’ve got,” he pauses, smiles sickly, brushes the pad of his thumb and scrapes his long, sharp nail over my inner arm, “a  _ connection _ .”

Slowly, his hand slides down, brushes my wrist, and joins mine. He laces our fingers together. His eyes never leave mine. I try to pull my hand away and he tugs hard, dragging me down to his level and licking his lips. 

“He’s dead,” Ren whispers heatedly, voice choked with so much emotion that I can’t tell pick any single one apart from the rest. “I watched the light leave his eyes. He told me to help him, to stop the bleeding, and I just  _ watched _ .” His voice cracks and tears gather in shining pearls at the corners of his eyes. He’s smiling and he’s crying at the same time. I yank my hand free and stumble back, away, chest heaving. Ren looks at me with glazed eyes and a subdued smile. He wipes his face with his sleeve. “I know. It’s a lot to take in,” he tells me, and I’m resentful, I’m angry that he’s telling me how he feels and that he’s right, that he actually knows. “I looked all over for you. He told me how you met once but he doesn’t keep any receipts. This is the third store I’ve been to today.” 

“Leave me alone,” I say. It comes out quiet, broken and weak. I’m shaking. I take two steps back when he takes one forward. “Just go. It’s over. I don’t want—” 

“Yes, you do,” he purrs. “Don’t even try to lie to me, we both think the way he does. I know what he was to you. I saw that corpse he packed into the basement refrigerator back then. He never cleaned it out properly, you know. I had to throw the whole thing out. Just the freezer left now.” His smirk is sharp and dangerous. “There’s something in there right now. I saved it. Thought we could share.” 

“No. I’m not—you don’t know me.” He can’t do anything to me here, now, in broad daylight, in the parking lot. I take a step closer and he holds his ground. I take another, shakier one, shoulder past him, start stomping back towards the store. 

“That’s fine,” he mutters. “You need some time, I get it. I’ll be back in a week.” 

He’ll 

_ what? _

I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t, but I turn around. I look back. Ren is standing there beside his car—beside Strade’s car—keys in hand, smiling at me like he’s glimpsed something rare and wonderful. “I’ll be back,” he repeats. “The house needs some work. There’s a lot I want to do to make it cozier. So we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. Might even run into each other when you’re off the clock. That’d be nice, right?” 

“Please,” I say hoarsely. “Leave me alone.” 

Finally, Ren’s smile disintegrates. He looks lost, uneasy, standing there with a trembling frown. “You get what I’m saying, right?” he asks. “He’s gone. He’s not coming back. All we’ve got is each other now.” 

“I  _ hated  _ him.”

“Maybe,” he says. “But there was something else there, too.” 

There wasn’t. I can’t make myself say it. There  _ wasn’t _ . The words are trapped in my throat, tangled together, rotting like him wherever he is. I cover my mouth and try to keep a sob from escaping. He’s dead. He’s really dead. Why can’t I laugh?

“You haven’t been over for a long time. I could make dinner,” Ren says. Like any of this is normal. Like I could ever, in any version of this situation, be interested in that offer. Quietly, he adds, “You know he recorded everything. I still have his movies.”

(I’m seeing dead and dying things, cooling bodies, screaming mouths, wounds opening around a hunting knife with a wet, sucking sound like the flesh is eager and wanting, like it caresses and sucks on the steel, inviting. I’m seeing us in the moment of exchange, him flinging a corpse to the floor like it’s trash and me wrapping my arms around a bruised and broken lover and kissing their cold forehead. 

He had asked me, stopping the recording and the livestream, shutting everything down and resting his bloodied hands on his hips. “You ever think about giving it another try?” 

And I didn’t have to ask because I knew what he meant; warm things. Living things. Noisy things. Things that could squirm and thrash and push me away, that could hurt me, that could reject me. Vicious things like him. Did I ever want to hunt with him again? is what he meant. Did I ever want to share prey while they were still moving? Did I ever want to feel him on top of me, inside of me, buried to the hilt with his tongue lapping at fresh tears, making me just as much of an animal as him again? 

“No,” I said.

He turned around and looked me over, tracing my body, my hands clutching dead flesh, my throat when I swallowed. He found my eyes and he asked me, slowly, “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said. 

He laughed. “Alright, buddy.” 

That was the only lie he ever let me get away with. When I went home, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. For the first time, I fucked a corpse and imagined it was somebody living.)

I hear a car door open and slam shut. Ren pulls out of the parking lot with one last look at me through the rearview mirror, and dragging myself back into the store feels like a walk of shame. Like losing. Like admitting defeat. But it isn’t that. 

“Deja vu, huh?” Jane says idly when I get back to my lane. 

I shrug. Yes and no. It’s the same but it’s totally different. He’ll come back and he’ll have me carry something out again and he’ll ask me to come over. It’ll wear on me. I’ll say yes eventually. We both know how this is going to go. We stand in the same long, inescapable shadow and no longer claw for the light. All I could think while he grabbed my arm with his clawed fingers was how I left him in that basement and never did anything to help, but he didn’t mention it once. I think we’re going to destroy each other because we have no other choice. As long as we’re alive, he isn’t really dead. It isn’t fair. It’s maddening. It makes me tremble with relief.

I find myself with an elbow on the register counter like a vulture watching with bated breath as something wounded lays down to die. Hungry and impatient.

Waiting anxiously.


End file.
